Often, I have seen overly simplistic perspectives on the levels of service that should be demanded of internet service providers. I’d like to start a discussion on a higher plane. Comments will appear below.<\/p>\n
There\u00a0appear to be a number of people who belive that their internet access should function more like a private line as contrasted with a shared resource. Let’s be clear – $45 per month does not pay for an internet access service that delivers 10 Mbps continuously for all 24 hours\u00a0in a\u00a0day.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, it seems to me that internet service providers need to be clear in letting consumers know what kind of performance criteria are being used to engineer the customers’ networks.<\/p>\n
In the old phone company days, most people simply assumed that the dial tone was always available. But the reality was that\u00a0the voice network was also a shared resource; not everyone could make a call at the same time. We had various engineering standards that were monitored.<\/p>\n
For example, during the busiest 3 months of the year, during the busiest hour of the day, 98.5% of callers were expected to receive dial tone within 3 seconds. Local and long distance circuits were engineered to a certain level of availability.<\/p>\n
Are there similar\u00a0criteria that can be developed for internet access services?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Often, I have seen overly simplistic perspectives on the levels of service that should be demanded of internet service providers. I’d like to start a discussion on a higher plane. Comments will appear below. There\u00a0appear to be a number of people who belive that their internet access should function more like a private line as …<\/p>\n